Robert Boswell, The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards, stories: These stories display Boswell’s extraordinary range, from the end of two women’s marriages, to a young man’s obsession with his fortune, to another man’s self-discovery on a mountaintop. (Graywolf)
Irish Elegies, personal essays by Chris Arthur (Palgrave-Macmillan): Irish Elegies is Chris Arthur’s fourth book of new essays in a series that includes Irish Nocturnes (1999), Irish Willow (2002), and Irish Haiku (2005), all published by the Davies Group, all fondly recommended by this reviewer. Irish Elegies departs from the trilogy by joining the ranks…
Without, a doubt, Absent Without Leave and Other Stories, Jessica Treadway's first book, is one of the most powerful debuts by an American writer in years. The ten stories in the collection are emotionally raw, unflinching in their honesty and generous in their depth. In another writer's hands, the situations presented here — often about…
Ron Carlson, The Signal, a novel: Carlson’s love for the mountains and mastery of fiction radiate in the pages of this thrilling story about a couple who ventures into the Wyoming wilderness only to discover the true nature of their wounds. (Penguin)
Collections of Nothing, a memoir by William Davies King (Chicago): There is, perhaps, only a continuum linking habit, hobby, obsession, and pathology. William Davies King, in his new memoir, stunning and smart, insists, "I collect nothing—with a passion." Throughout this quirky little book, the author riffs on the nothing that is not there, and the…
Madeline DeFrees recommends Adam Chooses, poems by Michael Spence: “These spare, understated poems have the elegant design and the formal ease we’ve come to expect of Michael Spence’s work. The stance is reminiscent of James Wright’s Green Wall poems in their escape from ‘that vacant Paradise’ to the celebration of the here and now.” (Rose…
James Carroll, Practicing Catholic, nonfiction: Carroll sets this searching examination of his faith against the history of the Catholic Church in America, and the sometimes glorious, sometimes discouraging actions of its leaders. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
The Extreme of the Middle: Writings of Jack Tworkov, edited by Mira Schor (Yale University Press): Jack Tworkov, one of the original members of the school of Abstract Expressionism, was also a teacher, administrator, husband, father, friend and devoted reader of poetry. All the facets of this complex and humane man are reflected in this…
What a pleasure to find a poet whose sense of risk and honesty drives her to complicate the emotions and attitudes of her poems — so that sorrow might be suddenly hijacked by bravado, or delight by anger and humor — rather than to wrap us up a neat little parcel of agreeable "sensitivities." In…
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